


Merry Yuletide

by KathAbernathy



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Headcanon, Oneshot, Porn With Plot, season 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28303761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathAbernathy/pseuds/KathAbernathy
Summary: Daryl tries to avoid a Christmas party.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Merry Yuletide

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is or where tf it came from and I take no responsibility for it whatsoever. I wanted to write a Christmas Caryl, but y'all are getting this, instead. 
> 
> I don't own these characters, but I sure like to play with them.

Daryl's never been much of a party animal, so when Carol and Maggie decide to host a get-together around what is traditionally Christmas, he makes plans for a hunting trip that places him conveniently absent at the appointed time and date. Festivity and holiday lights and merry cheer, visiting and gift exchanges et cetera, while not bad things, do not particularly float his boat.

No matter how long he's known everyone, he still feels horribly awkward and out of place in a crowd. He sucks at meaningless chit-chat and spent most of his time at the parties Merle dragged him to back in the day hiding in the corner, nursing a beverage. Sometimes he had a joint to smoke. He would lurk in the shadows until Merle was either ready to leave or vanished into a back room with some obliging gal. Then he'd disappear.

He can tell Carol's disappointed in him for planning an absence during the party. She also knows it's not his thing, but it isn't really hers either, and that's partially what confuses him about it now. If she doesn't enjoy it, why is she participating? Planning? But maybe she does enjoy it to a degree. She'd certainly presided over plenty of gatherings at the Kingdom. Maybe she liked them in the beginning, but burnt out on them after it became a duty. Maybe it helps her maintain a social facade, the smiling homemaker and harmless housewife.

Daryl snorts to himself to think of Carol as harmless. She's deadly as a cobra. The people that need to, they find out in a hurry.

She hasn't said anything to him about it, but he can tell she's not happy he intends to leave before the party starts. When he tells her his plan to go hunting, the light in her eyes momentarily goes out like someone flicked a switch. It's that sudden, and that noticeable. Clearly she hasn't been anticipating his absence.

"I can stay if you need me to..." he begins, caving almost instantly.

"It's okay, Daryl. I get it. You go on ahead." Her tone and her smile say it's perfectly fine, but her eyes can't lie. Not to him.

"Too many people," he offers as justification. "Don't like it. Council's all right cause we're there for a reason, but this is just so people can bullshit with each other."

"How very observant and on-point of you, Pookie. Yes, I suppose it's so people can bullshit, that's true." She gives him her head tilt with the side eye and crosses her arms and he's already starting to feel like a puppy who's piddled on the floor. "It's also to reestablish our connections within the community."

"Well you could stand to do some a' that," he says, then wants to smack himself in the head for letting that shit walk out from his lips unchecked because it doesn't sound right and she's instantly all over it.

"Indeed," Carol says, raising her eyebrows and drilling him with those pale blue eyes that can pin him like a bug on a board without warning. "And you're one of the people the community respects and looks up to. Your presence could go a long ways toward helping your best friend rebuild some broken bridges, you think?"

Now she's _really_ got him on the spot. God dammit. This isn't fair, she made her own fucking bed... but he knows she's right. How will it look if Carol co-hosts a function and her housemate and personal friend going back eons, also a Council member and community leader, is AWOL? It doesn't send a supportive message.

He can hardly claim it's critical that he go hunting, since they've already got enough meat preserved to last the community most of the winter. Carol's right, and it's going to send the wrong impression if he makes himself scarce. Daryl withers inside at the thought of mingling in a crush of people. Unlike the Council, which gathers with a specific purpose in mind, the only purpose of this Christmas party is to eat, drink, network and be social. Two out of four of which he generally finds horrifying to contemplate even under the best circumstances.

"Dammit, Carol," he breathes, glaring at her from behind his unruly bangs. "You know how I feel about that sorta shit."

"Yeah, I know, and I'm sorry. I really am... but I _need_ you there, Daryl. Please, just... show up." She reaches out to take his wrist and give it a squeeze, then she goes on her way and doesn't say another word about it.

That was day before yesterday and he's done a good job of avoiding her up to now. It's not quite dawn. He's loaded his pack and got his gear. Someone left a full thermos of tea on a side table on the landing and he sneaks about eight ounces of it into his mug. They won't even miss it. He returns to his room sipping at the tea, which is a little musty. He grimaces and quickly throws back the remainder in a single gulp, then double checks all his pockets and gear, shoulders his crossbow and heads upstairs.

He's just about to make a clean getaway when Carol materializes out of the dark kitchen, fully dressed with a cup of tea in hand, and she leans against the wall and watches him as he heads for the door. He resists looking in her direction as if she's Medusa, but he know that she knows that _he_ knows she's there, so he stops with his hand on the latch and turns his head her way in the tiniest of increments. It's enough, though.

"Leaving so early on such a big day," she says in a conversational tone. In the resulting silence, Daryl can hear the tiniest slurp of her lips as she sips at her tea. He knows he can't refuse her. He's never been able to. He realizes resistance is futile.

_"Stahp,"_ he mutters, taking his hand off the latch and using it to lean against the jamb, instead.

"You're busted, Dixon," she says, calling him out. "Running out on me... No, _sneaking_ out on me, under cover of darkness. I bet you'd leave a girl at the altar."

His lips twitch in a smile at that, but he doesn't turn away from the door. If he lets her capture his eyes with hers, she'll pull him in like a tractor beam.

"Daryl, its _Christmas,"_ she says.

He leans his forehead against the door and groans.

"Would it help if I take my clothes off?" she asks in a loud whisper.

He's certain he couldn't have heard her right. There's no way she said what he thinks she just said. What if she did and he doesn't respond, though? What if he just stands here and says and does nothing? What will she think? Or what if that's not actually what she said, but he thinks it is, and --

"Is that a yes?" she purrs, sounding much nearer than she was a second ago.

Daryl's still staring at the door and his mouth's working with no sound coming out and he feels like his whole body's going to burst into flames. He manages a nod, though... or maybe he was just shaking and it came across that way. Anyhow...

He hears the phlumph of her pants as they hit the floor to puddle at her feet. "Deal," she says. Her hand reaches out and grasps his shoulder, and the heat of her skin sears right through the fabric of his shirt --

*******

He wakes up on his couch, covered in sweat with his dick hard as iron. Somebody's knocking on the door of his room and of _course_ it's Carol. _Fuck_. There's no way he's softening this diamond cutter any time soon, and probably not until he yanks it out of its misery. He shuffles to the door and opens it just a crack.

She nearly knocks him over as she barges her way in and he backs quickly to the couch until it hits him behind his knees, then he sits, and tries unsuccessfully to look nonchalant when he pulls a pillow over his lap.

Carol marches straight up to him, grabs the pillow and, after a brief struggle, takes possession of it and throws it across the room. She crosses her arms and leans back a fraction, looking down her nose at his erection with a speculative eye. Daryl wants to cover himself with his hands, but he knows it would be pathetic, and obviously she's enjoying the show and who is he to deny her any fucking thing she wants?

"Is that for me?" she simpers. He can't tell if she's screwing with him, or not.

"It's yours if you want it," he offers. He leans back a little and gestures at his dick with his hands like a model on a game show displaying a potential prize. It's making an impressive tent in his pants. He'll play this game as long as she wants to. "What will you give me for it?"

The corner of her mouth twitches, and her chin jerks. "What do you want for it?" The tip of her pink tongue darts out to wet her lower lip, and Daryl feels himself visibly twitch. She lifts an eyebrow, impatient with his silence. She steps closer, standing between his legs, and grabs hold of the waistband of his pants.

He's gaping at her and frozen in shock, although of course what he wants most in the world is for Carol for mess with his dick, he's not an idiot. He didn't expect her to march in and take possession of his room, possession of _him_ , but she's Carol, so he probably shouldn't feel too surprised.

*******

"Daryl?"

"Do you think he's awake? His eyes are open."

"I don't think he's seeing anything. Daryl? Can you hear me?"

"I swear I didn't mean to leave that thermos, I just came by to meet up with Maggie and I set it down for a minute -- "

"It's all right. It was an accident." He hears the smugness and the smile in her voice. "It was probably for the better. He doesn't dare go out in the field like this, and it'll take hours to wear off. You go on ahead, I've got it from here."

He suddenly can see and he's looking right up into Carol's nostrils as she hovers over him. He hears light footsteps moving quickly away, and the front door opening and closing. She draws back with a frown and wrinkles her brow. "How are you feeling?"

"Weird." It's all he can manage to get out. Wait a minute, where is he? Is he on the _floor?_ He casts a look around and sure enough, he's lying on the floor in the entryway. He's partially in Carol's lap, and he fires a glance down at his crotch where his condition has traveled seamlessly with him across whatever dimension he's passed through since the first time she awakened his dick today. "I feel high."

"That's because you _are_ high, Pookie. You grabbed a cup of tea from the wrong thermos and drank a psychedelic. If acid was tea. Or mescaline... or something."

He tilts his head to squint up at her. "No shit?" It explains a lot. The weird, murky taste of the liquid and how everything suddenly seems magnified, intensified, and how his damn dick won't go down. He reaches up on impulse and cups her breast in his hand through her shirt. Her eyes widen and she gives him a look, but she doesn't say anything and most importantly, she doesn't pull away. He maps out the contours with his palm and rubs his thumb back and forth over where he thinks her nipple is and is rewarded by feeling it stiffen under his touch.

"Come down to my room," he says. "And I'll stay for your party."

Carol laughs. "I don't think you're going anywhere even if you wanted to, but I'll help you get back downstairs." She hasn't remarked on his hard on, which is all he needs to let him know she's seen it. Daryl is having all kinds of impulses and he's just about decided to act on most of them when they're suddenly in his room and she's dropping him onto his couch and turning to leave.

"Wait," he says, clutching her wrist. "Don't go, yet." He breaks into a grin. "Stay and play for a while."

She's not attempting to pull away, but her responding smile is cynical. "You're just horny because you're high, Daryl. It'll pass."

"Hell it will. I been horny for you forever and I ain't been high at all since the Turn, 'cept that one time at the CDC and when I got drunk with Beth." _Oh my god, did he just say what he thinks he said?_

But she's looking at him with that particular smile of hers he finds adorable, the one where she scrunches up her nose just a smidgen like a bunny or a gerbil, and her eyes twinkle like stars. He can't stop staring at her mouth, specifically her pink lips... then he gets to thinking of her other pink lips that he only sees in his own imagination. Oh, he's got it so fucking bad. Is he just going to lie here and cling to her wrist or is he going to do something about it? She's not brushing him off, he needs to make a move now or else let go forever.

He gives a slight tug, and she's suddenly giving him a little shove to move over and make room for her on the couch, which he does, and then she's sitting down next to him and cupping her hand over the aching hardness in his pants, and his dick pulses under her touch.

Carol lets out a low chuckle, her cheeks turning pink. "Is this for me?" she purrs.

*******

He is throwing up. There's no doubt about it, he's puking his guts out, but at least he's leaning over a toilet in a bathroom and not barfing on the rug or in Carol's lap. Carol's with him, actually, she's kneeling next to him and has helpfully pulled back his sweaty hair with both her small hands like he's her BFF who drank too much and they just closed the bar. He's retching miserably, heaving like he's determined to hurl his guts out his throat. He gags until bands of agony wrench his midsection, and she's there with him for all of it and his life just completely sucks ass right now.

*******

The next time he stops whirling down the rabbit hole, Daryl's in his room again.

"What the fuck is happenin' now?" he mutters. His boner is back and it feels bigger than ever. Carol must be here, and of course she is. She's sitting next to him and he's lying on his couch and he can see the smile that wants to burst across her lips and he can see the depths of her internal struggle to hold her mirth in place. He knows she's enjoying this and is going to get a lot of mileage from it later on.

"How long is this shit gonna last?" he demands. "The hell's gonna happen to me?"

"You'll be fine, Pookie. It's just a psychedelic. It'll wear off. The owner of the tea said you might develop, a, um, _heightened_ state of --"She breaks off as Daryl glances down at his crotch. "I don't think that's the state she was talking about, but yeah, that's also a potential side effect."

So the diamond cutter is beyond his control. How comforting. He needs to find a place to just jerk off and get back to normal. He's so turgid he feels like his dick's going to explode if he doesn't pop his cork soon.

Carol coaxes him into sitting up and drinking some mint tea. When she shoves the mug into his hand he recoils like it's a snake. She unleashes a merry burst of laughter, that happy chuckle that's uniquely hers and always makes him feel like everything's going to be okay. "It's just mint tea with a little honey. To rinse out the -- flavor -- of the last thing that was in your mouth."

"Maybe I don't wanna rinse my mouth," he says, still suspicious of the steaming beverage. He raises the mug to his lips and drinks, though. It's refreshing, and good, and mint with honey just like she said.

"You do what you want," Carol says, looking into his eyes in that direct way of hers, "Rinse your mouth, or don't rinse your mouth. I'm going to rinse mine after."

Daryl is in the middle of his second swallow of the tea and he nearly chokes on it. "After what?" he asks.

Carol leans over him and starts unbuckling his belt. Her quick hands unbutton his fly and his dick practically _leaps_ at her like a salmon surging upstream. She raises her eyebrows at his apparent enthusiasm, and reaches down to take hold of him in her hand. She makes a purring noise, curls her nimble fingers around his shaft and strokes him once, twice, three times, in a slow, languid motion that he feels every single maddening millimeter of.

Daryl's internal systems are all short circuiting, his nerve endings are sparking and flaming out and he's terrified he's going to come all over them both before she gets to finish whatever she intends on doing with his dick. He's shaking, and panting, and he's not cognizant of either until he sees the growing concern on her face.

"Don't stop," he manages to say, amazed he's retained any ability whatsoever to form words.

She does stop. She keeps her grip on him, though.

"Will you come to the party?"she asks.

"Carol, are you _kidding_ me?" he groans. "That's not fair."

"It is if we agree on an exchange," she asserts. "Tit for tat." 

"Oh my god, I'll give you whatever the hell you want, just _please -- "_

She dips her silver head and the wet, slick heat of her mouth engulfs him and he's rocketing off the edge of the earth, spinning up and out through the stratosphere. He reaches down with both hands to cradle her head and he's trying to be gentle and not to pull her hair but she's got her lips wrapped around him and is lashing him with her tongue in a way that wrecks him in less than a minute. He's coming completely apart and the sounds leaving his lips might embarrass him if he wasn't currently having the most intense orgasm of his entire life. He blacks out.

*******

Daryl opens his eyes and he's on his couch and he's wearing the clothes he'd put on this morning to go hunting in. That's almost the only thing that matches his memory of today, so far.

He's alone in the room. Thank god. He props up on his elbows with a groan and casts a glance at his crotch, which looks like his usual crotch and the endless erection of his delusions is nowhere to be found. He remembers Carol blowing him and thinking he was going to lose his mind with pleasure. Immediately, his body's responding to his thoughts and he clamps his hands over himself. "Don't you fuckin' dare, Dixon," he growls. He rolls onto his side and is lying there curled up and trying to stop his dick from getting hard again when Carol of course, knocks on his door.

"Yeah," he mutters, sitting up and pulling his hands away from himself as she flies into his room, closing the door behind her. She's dusted with flour and miscellaneous bits from whatever she's working on in the kitchen. Her face betrays no hint of what he thinks happened earlier. It was probably just a wishful hallucination on his part, but his orgasm felt real enough, and there's something new in her eyes he can't quite define. Like she's got a secret.

"You feeling more like yourself?" she queries, coming closer and putting her palm on his forehead. "You were burning up, earlier."

"Something I drank?" he asks, hesitant.

"Was it?" she asks. She's looking at him funny and he's not sure how to interpret it. Like she knows something but she's waiting to see if he knows it, too. He can't tell whether she's fucking with him. Did she or did she not come down here earlier and suck him off? His memory of its so sharp and clear, but he's had a lot of "memories" in the past several hours and not all of them factual or reliable. He still feels the ghost of her mouth and hands on him though, and how can he imagine something so _vividly_ unless it really happened?

"Had bizarre dreams," he says finally, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He dares to meet her eyes again, but can only hold her gaze for asecond before he's compelled to avert his.

"What kind of dreams?" she asks, standing next to the couch.

Is she shitting him? He _knows_ she wrapped her lips around his most intimate parts, unless he hallucinated the whole fucking thing. He doesn't know whether to feel silly or scared. It was too real, how can it not be? He sits there mute like an idiot because he is. Half a century on this earth and still he struggles to use his words.

"The guests are arriving soon," she says, "why don't you go get cleaned up?"

"Cleaned up..?" he says.

She fixes him with a look. "You promised, and I quote, 'I'll give you whatever the hell you want....' Remember that?"

Daryl's stuttering without making any words now and he's clutching at the arm of the couch like it's suddenly a lifeline.

Carol continues, "So, you're giving me your presence at the gathering tonight. Think of it as Christmas, or Hanukkah. Solstice, Merry Yuletide, Kwanzaa, I don't give a shit what you call it. Get showered and changed. Be there." She turns and heads for the door.

He calls her back. "Carol?"

She swivels in place and fires off that brilliant smile that blinds and paralyzes him at the same time. "Yes?"

"What... what about _you?"_ He _needs_ to know if it really happened, and if it did, he wants to reciprocate.

"What about me?" she says, seeming puzzled.

He just can't find the courage. It's not going to happen. It was probably just adream, albeit an incredibly realistic dream, but a dream nonetheless. It's still good for mental replays while he's whacking himself off in the future, and that's all. Color him cowardly, this is just the way it is. No way Carol actually smoked his pole like that and is now standing here acting like nothing's going on. He was high as a kite and his mind's jumbled reality with fantasy. That's all.

"Never mind," he mutters, then asks, "You ever have a dream felt so real that when you woke up you couldn't tell whether it was, or not?"

"All the time, back in the day," she replies, "until I ran out of pot. Get your shit together, Daryl. I need you upstairs in twenty." She's not meeting his eyes, though, and on her way out she pauses to pick up the mug she'd left next to the couch earlier. She finishes it, then looks at him pointedly and wipes the corner of her mouth with her thumb, giving the tip of her thumb the tiniest little suck. All the while with her bright blue eyes fixed on his. Daryl swallows hard.

"See you soon," she chirps brightly, pausing at the door. "After everyone's left, I'll come back down here and we can finish what we started. Deal?"

The last deal they made is fresh in his mind and he still owes her his presence at the party. Who is he to defy her, or try to resist her power? She's a force of nature. So he just nods numbly, incapable of further speech, and she winks, and leaves, and now he's sitting here with a hard on again. Shit.

**Author's Note:**

> *****  
> I know psychedelics don't hit you that fast when ingested. This is fiction, okay? If I'm still hanging out here next year (i.e. if I haven't pissed everyone off by then) I'm gonna write a parallel story to this one from Carol's perspective and add a coda. Oh yeah, and the diamond cutter's from Joseph Wambaugh's novel The Choirboys.


End file.
